Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The first eight stanzas were
composed extempore one winter evening in the cottage; when, after
having tired myself with labouring at an awkward passage in "The
Brothers," I started with a sudden impulse to this to get rid of
the other, and finished it in a day or two. My Sister and I had
past the place a few weeks before in our wild winter journey from
Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to Grasmere. A peasant whom we
met near the spot told us the story so far as concerned the name
of the Well, and the Hart, and pointed out the Stones. Both the
Stones and the Well are objects that may easily be missed; the
tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood: the
man who related it to us was very old.

Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from
Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads
from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable
Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of
in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now
exist as I have there described them.